Those Fantastic Lives: and Other Strange Stories

By Bradley Sides

Prepare to be transported to the edge of the world in Bradley Sides' affecting and haunting debut collection of magical realism short stories, Those Fantastic Lives and Other Strange Stories. In Sides' tender, brilliantly-imagined collection, a young boy dreams of being a psychic like his grandmother, a desperate man turns to paper for a miracle, a swarm of fireflies attempts the impossible, scarecrows and ghosts collide, a mother and child navigate a forest plagued by light-craving monsters, a boy's talking dolls aid him in conquering a burning world, and a father and mother deal with the sudden emergence of wings on their son's back. Brimming with our deepest fears and desires, Sides' dazzling stories examine the complexities of masculinity, home, transformation, and loss. Bradley Sides is an exciting new voice in fiction, and Those Fantastic Lives, which glows with the light of hope and possibility amidst dark uncertainties, will ignite imaginations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blacklight Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952536212

Book preview

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Contents

Those Fantastic Lives

Losing Light

Back in Crowville

The Mooneaters

Commencement

Dolls for the End of the World

The Creator

The Galactic Healers

Restored

A Complicated Correspondence

From Hiemslandia

The Comet Seekers

The Merpod

The Trapper

In the Hollow

The Hunt

What They Left Behind

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Discuss This Book

For all the dreamers,

young and old—those now and those becoming…

Those

Fantastic

Lives

One mistake is what separated Nellie from the others—the fakies as she called them. Nellie was no Miss Francine, and she certainly wasn’t a part of the, even worse, Psychic Sisters Network. She told her eight-year-old grandson, Sam, to mute the television every time one of the Psychic Sisters’ cheap ads came blaring from the screen. Those old ladies and their stupidly-written, synchronized sentences. As if completing someone’s thought was enough to make a person a psychic—or any kind of clairvoyant for that matter. Please, she grunted to Sam, rolling her eyes. Those women wouldn’t know a real psychic if one bit them on their collective behind.

Nellie conducted her last session before her self-imposed retirement no differently than the hundreds of others that had come before. Sure, she was admittedly a lot slower answering the door than the first time she’d welcomed a customer, but she still wore the same padded slippers to do so. Her familiar beige gown with faded black roses swept across the carpet the same way it always had, and, when she reached for the doorknob, her hands still first had to fumble with her antique celestial headwrap in an effort to contain the graying hairs sprouting from beneath its edges. These were Nellie’s ways.

Moira! she announced before she’d even fully opened the door. She extended her arms to the young woman on her steps. Moira, with her perfect skin and shiny black hair, shyly stepped back and put out her hand to shake Nellie’s.

I knew it was you before I ever saw you. I’m the real thing, you know, Nellie said, trying too hard for even herself.

You already know my name. I have an appointment.

Relax. It’s just a little psychic humor. Besides, I’m a psychic. I’m not in the fortune-telling business, Nellie said. Moira smirked.

For a moment, Nellie was quiet, fidgeting with her rings. You are even more beautiful than I imagined, she soon said, shifting the conversation in a more cordial direction. Her body loosened when she saw Moira’s reaction.  

The woman’s face relaxed at the compliment, and her crooked teeth gleamed in the morning sunlight.

Nothing could last forever, though. The smell of cigarettes and baby powder seeped out of the doorway and blanketed Moira. She fanned the air and spit into the sky. Thank you, she choked out, unable to ignore the compliment.

Come, baby. Come. You are my last reading in this lifetime, so let’s get going. I have a retirement to enjoy, Nellie said amidst her own episode of sputtering, damp coughs.

The two women regained their composure. Then, Nellie stepped outside and grabbed her new client by the arm. Come on, she said.

When they were inside, she slammed the door shut.

—

Nellie ushered Moira down the hallway, past the dusty black and white photographs of her deceased family members. She pointed to each one. That one’s thriving on the other side. This one is busy. And this one is very, very wild. You wouldn’t believe it. She turned to Moira and winked.

Nellie stopped and stood at a portrait of her grandmother. She held her hand to her chest. I miss this one the most, but she’s happy—just like she was in life, Nellie said. He, she said, flinging her arm up to the picture of her grandfather, well, let’s just say that he’s not. Nellie chuckled before she quickly grimaced and shook her head.

Oh, Moira said as her eyes widened.

Loosen up, girl. Don’t be so nervous, Nellie said. I’ll get you your answers. I’m not one of those fakies.

Nellie led Moira into the reading room and pulled out a large wooden chair from the circular table. Please, she said, motioning for Moira to sit.

The customer obliged. Her eyes traveled around the strange room. The midnight-colored ceiling. The scarlet, silk-draped walls. The candles on the edges of the floor. The crystal ball on the table. It looked ridiculous. Nellie knew as much; she hated it herself. But she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to compete against the fakies and their entire faux medium lives that popular culture had concocted and which had, consequently, tarnished the entire psychic community’s once serious reputation since the ‘90s. Colors. Candles. Crystal balls. Customers expected it. All of it.

Nellie, though, didn’t need anything other than a spirit—although, at her age, she did appreciate a sturdy chair. She could reach voices at the supermarket while waiting on her turkey to be sliced if she needed.

She moved to the other side of the cherry table and sat across from Moira. Nellie took a moment to collect her breath, and she wiped the streams of sweat that ran from her forehead and down her neck. She closed her eyes.

Do you need me to get you some water or something? Moira asked.

Nellie shook her head and looked up. Are you ready to begin?

Moira readjusted in her seat. Is this going to hurt?

Hurt? Nellie asked. No, girl. This won’t hurt. She stared at Moira, who didn’t seem very comforted. Why? Nellie followed up. Did you think it was going to hurt? Did someone tell you it might hurt? Did you hear it on one of those fakie Psychic Sisters’ shows?

No, no, Moira said, her eyes peering up from her thick, magenta-rimmed glasses. It’s not that. I’ve just never done anything like this.

Nellie wiggled her shoulders. Oh, I see. No pain involved. Just relax. Nellie clinched her hands and popped her knuckles. Her shoulders still danced about as she turned her head from side to side. All ready, she said.

She draped her hands over the crystal ball, holding her palms out.

Okay, Moira said hesitantly.

Place your hands under mine, Nellie said, moving to the front of her chair.

Moira slowly extended her hands to the table.

Come on. You can do it, Nellie said.

Moira sighed and gave Nellie her hands.

Good. Now, just relax.

Moira closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She moved her weight to the back of her chair, and she listened.

A blanket of silence suffocated the room. The flames from the candles popped, and wax slithered down into the candles’ cool holders. Each breath from the two women held power. Each soul drifting away into grayness, but, still, their bodies present—both searching.

Nellie’s mouth began to open. Slowly at first and then wider. Her throat loosened. Sounds gurgling. Sounds building. Sounds trying to break free.

Moira opened her eyes, and she watched Nellie. She’d heard that each psychic had her own way of contacting the other side. She wanted to see Nellie’s.

The psychic’s eyes rolled back into her head and her entire body shook as her mouth summoned a soul.

Jackson? Moira whispered. Are you here? she asked.

Nellie’s body violently convulsed. Then, the candles snuffed out. Her body was still.

Are you here, son? Moira asked.

Mommy, a soft voice said.

Jackson, she said. Her voice quivering. Are you okay? Are you okay, baby?

A rumbling interrupted the silence. The table rocked until it crashed, and a pair of small, bare feet rubbed against Moira’s. They ran to the door and, then, through to the light in the hallway.  

Jackson! Moira cried. She leapt from the table and chased the body that had escaped the room.

Jackson! her voice echoed down the hall and outside into the yard. Jackson! Jackson!

The inside of the reading room was quiet again. Mommy? the tender voice called.

A few seconds passed. Mommy? the voice asked.

But there was no answer.

—

Nellie dialed Moira a dozen times from her bed the next day to apologize, but each ring led to her voicemail—one with an impersonalized, computer-generated voice. There was no use, but Nellie still spoke at the command of the tone. She regretted what had happened. She was sorry. She was sorry. She was sorry.

But her apology wasn’t totally sincere. She hadn’t failed in the reading. Jackson came through. Nellie felt him. Moira spoke to him. He was in the room.

It was Sam who should be apologizing. Little Sam and his big curiosity.

Sam had lived with Nellie since he was three days old, and he’d grown up in her land of the dead. Her area of expertise wasn’t a secret. She taught him about spirits and the other side. On his fourth birthday, she bought him—them—a Ouija board. She showed him how it worked and laughed when they conjured spirits he heard, which usually belonged to guinea pigs or unicorns. Sometimes, it was his father or his mother that he spoke to, but Nellie quickly corrected Sam during those moments. They are not dead to the world, baby. Just to us.

He spied from his bedroom at Nellie’s clients, but he never spoke to them. Nellie told him he was too young to be in the world of grown folks. Little boys do little boy kinds of things, she said, but she never exactly explained what little boy kinds of things included.

He helped with just about everything. He seasoned the food she made, dried the dishes she washed, and folded the laundry she cleaned. All without complaint.

He kept Nellie’s schedule, for her, in a notebook. When she hung up the phone, she told him what to write, and he did.

He questioned the empty dates, as they grew more and more. Are we going on another trip, Nana? he asked her.

I’m too old for trips, she said.

She told Sam she was retiring and didn’t say anything else. He would need to figure it out on his own, but he’d seen enough lunchtime soap operas to know what the word meant. Those same stories helped him understand a lot of what Nellie often talked about. But retiring—well, retiring was different. It was a word that didn’t quite fit her.

—

Although Nellie advised him not to play with his Ouija board alone, that’s exactly what he did on the morning of her final session. After he woke up Nellie as he usually did, an hour before her appointment, he went to his room and sat on the floor.  

At eight, he was more serious with his efforts to connect with Nellie on her level. That desire to reach her increased by the day. He began to wear faded, wizard-like gowns and a coal black turban to breakfast. And what is this? she asked him.

I’m going to be a psychic, too.

Fine, she said, sipping her tea.

He was actually getting somewhere with his efforts. When he focused hard enough, the planchette slid over the board’s letters without any extra assistance. Something else began to happen, too. He could hear whispers if the house was totally silent.

On the morning Moira arrived, Sam listened for half an hour to the board, finally hearing the name Jackson.

The name meant nothing to him at that moment, but maybe it would to Moira, the final name Sam had written down in Nellie’s schedule.

—

Sam’s plan was in order. When Nellie went outside to greet Moira, he would slip from his bedroom and into the reading room, where he knew his grandmother would conduct the reading like she did all of her others. And